The partisan rancor beneath Boehner's rhetoric

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 3, 2010

"I've made it pretty clear," House Minority Leader John Boehner said, "that if we are a majority and I'm lucky enough to be speaker, I'm going to run the House differently than it's being run today and differently than it was run under Republicans in the past."

Boehner (R-Ohio) was sitting in his Capitol office, an ever-present pack of cigarettes near his fingertips. It was a few hours before he would end up on the receiving end of an attack from President Obama for having described the financial regulatory bill as "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon." That remark, to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, would bring him heaps of criticism all week.

Boehner's week was hardly helped by a comment from his former colleague Joe Scarborough, who volunteered on his MSNBC program, "Morning Joe," that the minority leader had a reputation of not being a particularly hard worker. A Politico story pointing to tensions between Boehner and some of the younger GOP House leaders rounded out a trifecta of unwelcome publicity.

There are certainly enough House districts in play to give Boehner's party the 39 additional seats needed to take back the majority it lost in 2006. Boehner said Republicans have "a great opportunity" to take control but concedes they still face "an uphill climb."

(More here.)